“Jörmungandr,” Chu Zihang leaned powerlessly against a broken stone column. “Fenrir’s sister.”
“That’s right,” Xia Mi nodded. “I am Jörmungandr, Dragon Queen Jörmungandr. In your human mythology, I am the serpent that encircles ‘Midgard.’”
“You must also have another sister, Hela, the death goddess.”
“Hela hasn’t been born yet,” Xia Mi squinted her eyes, “but soon. Today is her day of birth, right here.”
She glanced at Lu Mingfei, who was still standing there in a daze, and suddenly laughed, mocking him like a girl teasing a boy who was caught peeking at her, her laughter filled with cold sarcasm.
“Don’t worry, senior brother, there won’t be a third Dragon King tonight. Your guess was correct. All four monarchs’ thrones are shared by a pair of twins,” Xia Mi said coldly after laughing, “Death Goddess Hela is the fusion of my brother and me, tonight, right here.” She bent down to kiss the dragon’s ruined eye. The massive eyeball had shriveled, all its blood and other fluids drained, leaving only a gaping black hole, horrifying like an insect’s eggshell after hatching.
The tenderness of the kiss was like a little girl nudging her kitten with her nose, but for some reason, Lu Mingfei felt a chill run down his spine.
“You want to devour him,” Chu Zihang said softly.
“Yes, I didn’t expect humans could deduce such a secret from fragmented history. Our power comes from our bloodline. Purebloods, unlike you lowly hybrids, need not strive to improve the purity of our bloodline. We’ve already reached the peak. Our way to strengthen it is to mix in the blood of another pureblood kin.” Xia Mi sat on the ground, hugging the dragon’s massive head, gently rubbing her cheek against it. Her face was covered in tiny scales, yet it was still beautiful. “Once I eat him, our bloodlines will merge, and Hela will be born. Hela is neither Jörmungandr nor Fenrir. She is both of us combined but stronger than the two of us put together.”
“You intend to ultimately evolve into a god?”
Xia Mi nodded. “You put it well. The so-called death goddess is the queen of Nibelungen. She can open the doors to all the deathly realms in the world. It will be the return of the mythic age—beautiful, but unfortunately, none of you will be around to witness it.”
“You mentioned your brother to me… You said he believed in you, that you were his everything in his eyes… He had a chance to fight back, but he was surprised because you stood before him,” Chu Zihang’s voice was faint, his blood-soaked hair hanging low and obscuring his eyes. “You could have devoured him long ago. Why wait until today, going to all this trouble?”
Xia Mi covered her mouth, chuckling lightly. She suddenly pounced on the dragon’s head, pounding on her “brother’s” skull as if she had heard the funniest joke in the world.
“Because I love him,” Xia Mi said softly, no longer smiling.
What the heck? You kill someone if you love them? Lu Mingfei thought, this love is truly world-shaking! But he couldn’t voice his sarcasm—one, because he was scared stiff, and two, because when Xia Mi said that, she looked up, tears flowing from her scaled face, with golden eyes brimming with sorrow like a rising tide.
If she were acting, she could easily win an Oscar!
“Do you think he seems unlike a dragon at all? He’s so naive, like a child of four or five years old. He has incredible power but doesn’t know how to use it. He just follows behind me, calling ‘sister, sister,’ saying he wants to go out and play.” Xia Mi looked up, letting the tears flow freely, her golden eyes becoming more intense. Her facial bones made a “crackling” sound as they twisted, her mouth opening wider, teeth protruding like sharp thorns. She was rapidly transforming into a sorrowful and enraged female dragon. “But he’s my brother! Why wouldn’t I love him?”
“But you kept him here… You are the real gatekeeper of this alchemical labyrinth, aren’t you? You kept him as your food… You planned all along to devour him one day. You were waiting for him to fully hatch.” Chu Zihang said softly.
“Shut up!” In an instant, a series of afterimages flashed, and Xia Mi lunged at Chu Zihang, grabbing and lifting him into the air.
She could no longer be called “Xia Mi.” Various draconic features appeared on her. Her clothes were torn by scales and bone spikes, her body bare, her muscles as hard as steel, with bones protruding from her forehead and jaw. Her knees were bent backward, and what had once been slender legs could now be called “powerful hind limbs.” She had accelerated in an instant, moving so fast that the naked eye couldn’t even catch her figure.
She was a Dragon King—Jörmungandr, the Dragon King.
“Did I say something wrong to make you so furious?” Chu Zihang actually smiled lightly, coughing up black blood. “Isn’t he just your food? Dinner awaits you; aren’t you going to dig in?”
“Shut up!” Jörmungandr roared. “Do you even understand the despair of an abandoned race? A thousand years of sleep! Endless, recurring nightmares! In the deepest darkness, there’s only yourself!” Red liquid flowed from her eyes—whether dragon tears or blood was uncertain. “And your brother holding your hand… Could you bear to sacrifice him? He’s the only one who accompanied you for a thousand years, year after year! Only him… On the abandoned throne, only the king and the king could keep each other warm…”
She burst into wailing, like a madwoman, or a girl who had lost her beloved doll.
“But you’re still going to devour him, aren’t you?” Chu Zihang said softly. “Do you need to say such weak words to a human like me? Do you think I can comfort you? You’re a dragon. Even if your whole race was down to just you two, you’d sacrifice the only one left to keep you warm for power and dominion… You are a species where the strong survive, and that’s why you are stronger than us fragile humans. Only the strongest make it to the end, and the weak become food for their kin. You’ve already succeeded. The successful have no need to shed the tears of the weak.”
Long silence. Jörmungandr held Chu Zihang aloft. Two figures covered in scales, ash-gray, stood at the edge of the desolate platform like some kind of deeply meaningful sculpture.
“Yes, you’re right,” Jörmungandr said softly, smiling again. “You’re strange. Are you really human? The way you think is more like one of our kind.”
“I’m just trying to understand you from a theoretical standpoint. I’m pretty good in theory classes.”
What a sarcastic comment… even Lu Mingfei felt he couldn’t compare. At the end of the day, the art of sarcasm wasn’t just about wit; it was about a certain state of mind—being able to keep at it, endlessly.
“But he wasn’t just food,” Jörmungandr said quietly, her tone shifting back to that of the stubborn girl called Xia Mi. “He was my brother.”
“You had no choice. You entered Cassell College for the Dragon King Constantine’s remains, right? If you devoured him, you could’ve fused new blood as well,” Chu Zihang said.